Interesting writeup of hacking MySQL to dirty memcached entries after replication sync.

Quoted: REPLACE INTO profile (`first_name`) VALUES ('Monkey') WHERE `user_id`='jsobel' MEMCACHE_DIRTY 'jsobel:first_name'

We inadvertently provisioned a few database machines with MyISAM instead of InnoDB, and it has been a nightmare. I strongly advice against using MyISAM -- ever.

With MyISAM, we periodically get these incorrect "duplicate key" errors that don't go away until you run the lenghty "repair table" command that somehow fixes everything.

Quoted: Use MyISAM when: The data isn't too critical ( "unreliable and slow, related to table size, table repair process" )
...
Use InnoDB for tables when: The table will be big (100Mb+ - "For reliability and performance, we use InnoDB for almost everything at Wikipedia - we just can't afford the downtime implied by MyISAM use and check table for 400GB of data when we get a crash." )

Quoted: Mikamai, the company I work for, has just released Montalbano.tv, the companion site to one of the most successful TV shows in Italy. I was the technicaldirector of this Drupal based project, and while I was happy we chose Drupal, because it allowed us to deliver all the features they needed on time, I almost panicked when they told us the production setup would have two servers, both with database and web serving duties.

Looks like a great set of tools for MySql.

Quoted: Essential command-line utilities for MySQL (formerly MySQL Toolkit)

My friend Peter's consulting business. Peter worked on performance at MySQL, and he writes the extremely useful MySQL Performance Blog. These guys know their stuff.

Well, this is awesome.

Quoted: If you specify ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, and a row is inserted that would cause a duplicate value in a UNIQUE index or PRIMARY KEY, an UPDATE of the old row is performed.

Quoted: However, it is also an extremely simple piece of software: all of the logic is client-side, there is no security model, failover, backup mechanisms, or persistence (albeit the last one is in the roadmap). But that hasn't stopped the developers from deploying it in all kinds of environments, and here are a few best practices suggested by Brian:

I like the "nutshell" books. This one teaches PHP.

Quoted: Amazon.com: PHP in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)): Paul Hudson: Books

Read online on Safari here (free w/ Seattle Library Card): http://safari.oreilly.com/0596100671